The Sound of My Thoughts
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their life a mimicry, their passions a quotation." - Oscar Wilde
Well...Al be darned! Every time I gander un'ner da hood, I learn some'um new.
A few days ago I learned about a major disconnect that's inside many people's heads. It seems obvious now and I'm seeing it everywhere. It explains a lot of puzzling behavior observed over the years and much of the present day social dysfunction.
Many people, maybe most, don't recognize their own thoughts, even while they're actually happening. Psychiatrists and psychologist, of course, know this. (H/T to Dr. P.) There are probably degrees of this disconnect but it's something I don't seem to have. Nonetheless, it reveals a basic assumption of mine that needed to be tossed out: That everyone can clearly recognize their own thoughts and, by extension, when their mind is tossing around someone else's thoughts rather than their own.
"To not be on speaking terms or otherwise have a direct relationship with your thoughts...that sounds like a special hell."
I've recognized the voice inside my head as the sound of my thoughts since I was at least six years old. At age six, all the external voices were adults and were a complete mismatch to what I was hearing inside my head during moments of solitude or play. Or terror. Such was the circumstance that occasioned my earliest remembered adult thought.
I grew up in a house with 10 people living in about 1,200 square feet - six females, four males, one bathroom, and a wheelchair-bound father who was a very angry man. During one of his explosive rages directed at one of my older siblings in which I was caught in the middle, I clearly remember the thought, delivered in a matter-of-fact voice, "I'm in the way. I have to get out of here." As in leave, escape.
This wasn't an adult voice. It was a small voice. I can still hear it, even though it grew up and matured along with my physical body and later experiences.
I've always known the sound of my own thoughts and this knowledge has helped me discard a container ship load of bad advice from others. It has also prevented me from hearing what I needed to hear in my younger years from those who genuinely did have my best interests at heart along with valuable experience to pass along, if I'd only listened.
Anyway, back to other people. I have a little better understanding of what's happening when observing someone's bonehead behavior: "What are they thinking?", I'd ask. The answer, many times, is probably not that they aren't thinking, rather they aren't listening.
This, of course, applies to my own bonehead behaviors when thinking becomes disconnected in this way. But over the years I've developed a sizable cache of tools that help me recognize when this is happening and how to reconnect. To not be on speaking terms or otherwise have a direct relationship with your thoughts...that sounds like a special hell.
I also have an additional piece to a puzzle I've been working on for decades. When people experience traumatic events an epistemic window of opportunity opens and they experience a seismic shift in their world view. Perhaps a significant change in their personality, too. The experience pries open their mind and reveals a much bigger world. For some, their response is to recoil and close down, seal themselves away from the bigness. For others, they open up and grow. It's beyond the scope of this post to expand on each of these possible general paths.1
The puzzle I've been working to solve is how to open people's minds like this without the traumatic experience. The benefit of the traumatic method is it's fast and unequivocal. The downside is...well, it's traumatic. The experience could close the person down even more. Also, inducing such a trauma is both unethical and undoubtedly illegal. It's Schrödinger's Lesson Plan. The lesson inside the trauma box could either shut you down or open you up, but you have to open the box to find out.
Where I'm at with this puzzle so far is that the best path toward an expanded world view happens incrementally. There are ways to accelerate progress, by applying many of the fundamental principles found in Agile methodologies combined with a dedicated mindfulness practice, for example.
The key ingredient with this approach is time. The student needs time to integrate the incremental changes as they work toward deeper and deeper insights. Many forms of psychotherapy offer additional pathways toward this shift, but most people either do not have the resources to hire a psychotherapist or, in the case of team leaders, do not have the qualifications nor the interest in providing psychotherapeutic interventions in the interests of team productivity.
Ah, well. At least I have several new party question to ask:
When was your first adult thought? What was it and what were the circumstances?
What do your thoughts sound like?
How do you know you're thinking and not repeating someone else's script?
"The Sound of My Thoughts" last updated on 2024.12.03.
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Footnotes
1 There are several topic that may help guide you down a path that expands your world view.
Collier, L. (2016, November). Growth after trauma. Monitor on Psychology. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2016/11/growth-trauma
Courtney E. Ackerman, MA. (2024, October 2). Learned helplessness: Seligman’s theory of Depression. PositivePsychology.com. https://positivepsychology.com/learned-helplessness-seligman-theory-depression-cure/
Dell'Osso, L., Lorenzi, P., Nardi, B., Carmassi, C., & Carpita, B. (2022). Post Traumatic Growth (PTG) in the Frame of Traumatic Experiences. Clinical neuropsychiatry, 19(6), 390–393. https://doi.org/10.36131/cnfioritieditore20220606
Peterson, C., Maier, S. F., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2023). Learned helplessness: A theory for the age of personal control. Oxford University Press.